A mobile testbed for GPS-based ITS/IVC and ad hoc routing experimentation

Past investigations into the formation of ad hoc networks and ad hoc routing have focused on computer simulations of mobile traffic. However, the proliferation of mobile electronic devices (mobile phones, PDAs, and laptop computers) combined with the commoditization of GPS chipsets has made realizable the construction of a large-scale testbed for both GPS and non-GPS aware ad hoc network applications. We present the Rice University shuttle bus (RUSH) project as such a testbed in its first stages of development, in which we have outfitted the shuttle bus system at Rice University with custom wireless and GPS hardware.